Congo's Ebola outbreak tops 9,000 cases with nearly half of patients dying

Congo's Ebola outbreak has crossed 9,000 confirmed cases and is killing nearly half of everyone it reaches — a toll that has made it the largest and deadliest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's history, and the second-worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded globally.

The DRC Health Ministry's situation report released Tuesday put the cumulative confirmed case count at 9,066 and the death toll at 4,381 — a case fatality rate of 48.3 percent, according to Xinhua. Tuesday's update tallied 88 new infections and noted that spread within communities continues to pose a concern, ABC News reported.

The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which no vaccine or approved treatment currently exists. WHO Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu said Tuesday that a clinical trial assessing how well a vaccine works against the Bundibugyo strain will be launched in the DRC within the next few weeks, according to Al Jazeera.

Sixty-five health zones spread across seven provinces have recorded cases, with the eastern province of Ituri at the center of the outbreak and responsible for more than 70 percent of all confirmed infections, according to Xinhua. The outbreak was officially declared on May 15, though some experts suspect it began as early as February, Al Jazeera reported.

Health workers are alarmed by where people are dying: a large share of recorded deaths are occurring outside treatment centers, a sign that patients are not reaching care in time — or are not seeking it at all. Confirmed cases represent only about one-third of the total, with the remainder going undetected, officials told ABC News.

The reasons containment is failing are multiple and reinforcing. Active fighting between government forces and the M23 rebel group has made transporting healthcare resources to remote regions difficult. Widespread community mistrust — with many residents believing the disease is a pretext for officials to siphon money — has driven people away from treatment centers. Intense population movements and shortages of medical supplies compound the problem, according to ABC News and Al Jazeera.

The violence against responders is not abstract. According to his political party, a local politician in eastern DRC was killed in September — beaten to death after he went on the radio to defend the government's Ebola response, Al Jazeera reported.

I feel that the government is overwhelmed by events. But there is nothing else to say. The government needs to fully shoulder its responsibilities to ensure the effectiveness of the response against Ebola.— Samuel Buju, resident of Bunia, provincial capital of Ituri

The outbreak has now surpassed all 16 of Congo's previous Ebola outbreaks in scale. In terms of global comparisons, the only larger outbreak on record is the 2014–2016 epidemic in West Africa, which generated 28,600 confirmed cases and killed more than 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to the WHO as cited by Al Jazeera.

The crisis is no longer contained within Congo's borders. According to Al Jazeera, Kenya last week became the second country after Uganda to confirm an imported case, after a Kenyan national who had been living in the DRC passed through Uganda on his way to Nairobi, where he later died. Uganda had earlier recorded 20 cases and two deaths but was declared Ebola-free in August.

The current outbreak is on track to surpass the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic's death toll of more than 11,000, according to ABC News, if the trajectory does not change. The combination of a strain with no approved countermeasures, an active conflict zone, and confirmed cross-border spread has placed this outbreak in a category of its own in the DRC's history.

Why it matters — With nearly half of confirmed patients dying, no approved treatment or vaccine for this Ebola strain, and cases now crossing into Kenya and previously Uganda, the DRC outbreak is on a trajectory that could surpass the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.

Reported by pbs.org, abcnews.com, reuters.com, aljazeera.com, english.news.cn